


heavy is the head

by wicherwill



Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:26:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21900133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wicherwill/pseuds/wicherwill
Summary: She knows closure is an elusive target. Mia meets Michael and tries anyhow.book/movie canon blend
Relationships: Michael Moscovitz/Mia Thermopolis, Nicholas Devereaux/Mia Thermopolis
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	heavy is the head

She hasn’t written in a journal for years (a paper trail! Too dangerous!) but has never figured out what to do with her hands when nervous.

There’s no such thing as an incognito meeting when you’re a reasonably popular royal figure, but Japan lacks the frenzied paparazzi packs that she’d become accustomed to elsewhere. Nevertheless, her team had insisted on arriving early to sweep the restaurant so...she’s already seated when she sees him at the door. 

He bends down to remove his shoes, quietly speaking to the attendant.

Her heart is beating so fast it’s making her dizzy. 

She's transported back: visiting college campuses separated by a quick train ride (in theory, of course, she’d never have heard the end of it if she’d tried taking it). Hands in each other’s jacket pockets—a kiss, a hug, a quick story before running off to class. The very definition of normal, young love, unencumbered by royalty or expectations. It had all seemed so good and easy. It had been good and easy, for a very long time.

She catches his eye and looks away, pretending to dig through her purse. 

She’d only started imagining this meeting—plotting, really, scheming all alone without the help of her best friend—in the past few years. Not nearly enough. She should have strategized more.

Suddenly he’s standing next to their table and her hands are shaking even more. He notices. “It’s just lunch, Thermopolis.”

She nods as she slides along the bench and stands up. “Did you tell your sister about it, then?”

“ _Hell_ no,” he says. He pauses. “Did you?”

“...of course not.”

It hasn’t been that long but he looks so different. He's almost 30, and she suddenly feels so very young, like she's still a student and not the Queen Of A Small European Country Without A Sovereign Debt Crisis, Thank You Very Much. He tries to go in for a hug and she jumps a mile in the air, holding out a hand. He smiles. 

She decides to sit on her hands in hopes they’ll stop shaking.

“Can you believe it’s been five years since we last saw each other?” he asks.

She makes a noncommittal sound. Best stay away from the past and stick to questions to which she already knows the answer. Standard Royal Training. “So, you work in Osaka now?”

He shakes his head, as if to do away with any small talk. “I looked through our emails,” he says. “When I was packing to move here. All the way from those early days in school through when we were trying to make it work. Reading through all of it —” he clears his throat. “We were really in love.” 

This was supposed to be a casual lunch, a hey-I'm-halfway-across-the-world-where-you-are lunch, a I’m-still-best-friends-with-your-sister-but-she-refuses-to-reveal-anything-you're-doing lunch, a it’s-hard-to-do-any-proper-stalking-on-your-official-issued-smartphone-because-your-bodyguard-is-nosy lunch. Suddenly it’s turned into an all-out assault.

“We were so young.”

She nods, not really trusting her voice.

“And yet, we knew!”

She nods again.

He suddenly laughs, and she laughs, and to her horror she feels tears welling up in her eyes.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. “You miss me as much as I miss you?”

She shakes her head, but she’s crying, now, she's got to stop, because she's convinced herself these past few years that what they had was just crazy rush of youthful hormones. That’s the story, and she’s sticking to it with every particle of her being. 

“It was real.”

“It was real,” she hears herself say. 

The restaurant is empty. Joe and Lars are sitting outside in the car. There’s no one here to pretend for, no reporter to be wary of. 

Memories that she’s kept locked away have started to surface, but it’s Princess Training To The Rescue, she is going to talk about Something Else.

“I hear great things about your current work. Innovative medical robots? Something like that, right?”

And they’re off, and she finds that it’s actually quite interesting. It’s not hard to focus on what he’s saying. Clearly being overqualified in all spheres of life is a Moscovitz trait. There’s a lot to catch up on. Her entire life is publicly available. She only knows the vaguest outlines of how he ended up on the cover of Forbes.

Turns out the story isn’t much more detailed, because there is nothing that does not come easy to these two siblings.

There's a capitulation to the Drs. Moscovitz two years after graduating by getting an advanced degree of _any sort, it does not matter._ _It does not help when your sister is the economic advisor to an entire country_ he wryly notes _and your highest accomplishment is being able to string together a series of shows that pay in cash and not alcohol._ He moved back home to San Francisco, meant to go into acoustic engineering, found himself enjoying a cardiology seminar, and somehow it was years later.

He’s joking, of course, and being incredibly modest. She knows it's his baby, his company for which he’s missed multiple Yom Kippurs and Rosh Hashanahs (and one particularly contentious family wedding).

She’s got stories of her own, too, and intersperses them with his tales of being a globe-trotting CEO in great demand. Pears aren’t the most recession-proof export during a global credit meltdown, she learnt, but with Spain and Greece going through some issues themselves they’d been able to expand their olive oil exports. _It would surprise you how long I can speak about olive oil_ , she notes, _I hardly practiced the speech I gave yesterday at the International Olive Oil Conference in Tokyo. It is a TED Talk waiting to happen. The History of Genovian Oil Pressing Circa 1254-1650._

They’re laughing—he doesn’t believe that she voluntarily gives public speeches—and it’s like nothing has changed, they’re laughing and cutting each other off and maybe there’s nothing to it. Maybe everything can be different. 

“Hey, you,” he suddenly says, and she’s perhaps not entirely unaware of how soft his voice has gotten. “What’s going on with you?”

Was it something they taught at the Moscovitz household? Mia Thermopolis Emotional Management 101? She’s searching for something relevant to say when he makes to moves over to her side of the booth. Her quick, instinctive dart—are there photographers around? Will someone see?—gives him pause. It was always easier when he visited her, in sleepy New Jersey where there were no cameras.

Eventually she lands on, “Ruling is lonely. If it weren’t for Lilly, I would be in a really bad place.”

When they’d finally, finally broke up, she was in middle of trying to graduate early and he was touring somewhere in Europe. Lilly had shown up that night, looking like she’d gone straight from class to the airport. Somehow, she finished the semester, and then went back home to San Francisco, the first holiday she hadn’t spent in Genovia since she was 16. 

The palace put out a statement that they were friends, the Princess would finish her schooling in America as originally planned and Wishes Mr. Moscovitz All The Best, the Royal Family Would Appreciate Your Kindness For Their Privacy, etc

At the start of the Nicholas saga Lilly came for the fun of it, but when she returned for the end she came with her stuff and a stubborn look on her face it was more _it would be less expensive if I just found you therapist you liked as much as Dr. Knutz_ , she grumbled, _you’re lucky that I find the economics of this socialist utopia fascinating._ The palace had dusted off their statement (the Queen Wishes Lord Devenreux All The Best, the Royal Family Would Appreciate Your Kindness For Their Privacy, etc).

She’d never probed too much into the complicated balancing act that Lilly played, but then again she’d never be able to say thank you for all she’d done. 

She leans forward: “At the end of the day, my marriage didn’t make being a queen less lonely. Or maybe it was that marriage.” Out of instinct, she says it just above a whisper across the table, her lips barely moving. “It was too much for Nicholas. Which makes me think, is it me? Is it the role? What prevented you from being happy?”

“We would have been ridiculously happy together if we’d gotten married.” He says it all in one go, another dose of patented Michael Moscovitz Droll Emotional Honesty Likely To Haunt Her Dreams.

But this time she’s prepared. “Then why didn’t we? Why did you say no?”

There’s a dull ringing in her head. Anger from all those years ago, feeling it all again. Being rejected.

He’s not quite meeting her eyes. “I thought...I thought something better would come along. For you.” 

“I told you I wanted you,” she says, trying not to raise her voice. “I begged you.”

“I know,” he says, his head in his hands.

At the end of the day, though, there isn’t anyone else around and there’s only one answer she wanted from this meeting. “I don't have regrets, Michael, and I don’t have hard feelings. I just want to know if it was me or the role or both?”

She stares at him, face burning. He doesn’t respond.

A part of her knew this. There is no answer, no closure she will get.

“I have to go,” she says, finally.

Her hands have stopped shaking, and she thinks that’s about as good as it will get.

**Author's Note:**

> On my drive for a while because it doesn’t want to end happy. I suppose that’s what closure is, though...


End file.
